In a move that makes a lot of sense as far as publicity goes, Elon Musk's SpaceX program is planning to send a Tesla Roadstar into orbit around Mars. The weirdest part about this whole thing isn't the environmentally conscious car floating around in space, however, but the fact Musk claims David Bowie's "Space Oddity" will be playing inside the car. Doesn't this dork know there's no sound in space?!
The Tesla Roadster is expected to be out in space for a billion years, apparently, but it'll eventually drift further than Mars at some point. That is, of course, if everything goes according to plan. It could explode on takeoff and be a waste of time, but it could also be a successful and more extravagant publicity stunt than those 'flamethrowers' Musk's Boring Company released recently.
The reason SpaceX is launching a Tesla Roadster on the Falcon Heavy test flight instead of a dummy payload of concrete or steel, is because Musk thinks it'd be "extremely boring" to do things the normal way. “Of course, anything boring is terrible, especially companies, so we decided to send something unusual, something that made us feel," he said in an Instagram post at the time. He previously said they were trying to think of "the silliest thing we can imagine" to put in the top of the very first Falcon Heavy rocket.
SpaceX has shared a mock-up of the planned mission, and it's appropriately set to Bowie's "Life On Mars?," because Musk is clearly a huge fan. Maybe Musk can use his magical science powers to give me a Tesla Roadster instead of sending one to Mars, where there aren't even roads anyway. Watch the CGI mock-up of the mission below.
